


Milk and Honey

by Thursday_Next



Category: The Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Domestic, M/M, farming, sutcliff_swap 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-28
Updated: 2013-05-28
Packaged: 2017-12-13 06:18:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/821013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thursday_Next/pseuds/Thursday_Next
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus visits Uncle Aquila. There are things he tells him, and things he does not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Milk and Honey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [templemarker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/templemarker/gifts).



> Many thanks to my beta, who isn't even familiar with the fandom but kindly helped me out anyway.
> 
> Templemarker, I'm not sure this entirely constitutes curtain fic, but I hope you enjoy this glimpse into Marcus and Esca's domestic bliss nonetheless.

As it turned out, there were not three bad harvests, but three good years, and so when the time came for Marcus to visit Uncle Aquila it was not to beg for assistance, but to share the fruits of their prosperity.

It was strange to him to step into the atrium, now that it was no longer his home. It felt acutely Roman in a way that his own home, he now realised, did not – and not only because they could not yet spare the time or the money to build a proper villa. Their farm was as much Esca's as it was his; Marcus had insisted they go into the venture as equal partners or not at all.

Uncle Aquila bade him sit, and Marcus was grateful for the rest. Although his leg no longer pained him as it once had, the journey was not a short one and wet besides, and he had begun to feel the old injury flaring up a little. He suspected it might be more in remembered pain than present discomfort, and he knew now why Esca had shaken his head when Marcus had asked him to accompany him here. It was not simply that the sheep needed someone there to watch over them, the men they had hired were useful and trustworthy enough. He imagined that Esca would feel the same phantom pain in his clipped ear, returning to where he had long been a slave, however warm the welcome.

Sassticca and a girl Marcus had not seen before brought in Marcus’s bundles, while he asked his Uncle how he and his household had been faring since he had moved away. There were new neighbours and old to hear tell of, machinations in local politics, news from the far corners of the Empire that had reached his uncle’s ears before his.

Soon enough, the conversation turned to Marcus and his farm.

"And so, your experiment is a success?"

"Taste for yourself, Uncle," Marcus answered him, nodding towards the spread on the table before them. There was milk, wine and honey, plus a package of undyed wool. Uncle Aquila had been generous to Marcus, in the past, when he could as easily have turned him out, and so Marcus was generous in his turn. Sassticca had exclaimed over the honey as it had been unpacked, and Marcus smiled, knowing he would likely be taking his own weight in honey cakes back home with him.

"So, truly the down country is the land of milk and honey," Uncle Aquila smiled. "You are well contented with the farmer's life, then? No longing for adventure?"

Marcus recalled their adventures north of the wall, holed up in a cave, the taste of mud and blood and sweat; running on legs that threatened to give out at any moment. No, he had no longing for adventure. What he had done, he had done for the Eagle and his father's honour, not for adventure's own sake.

"Farming is an adventure of its own kind, Uncle," he replied, and that was true enough.

Marcus told his uncle of the difficulties they'd had that first winter, when the ground was too frozen to break and they'd feared nothing would ever grow, though they worked until their backs ached from the labour, dawn until dusk. How Ceres had smiled upon their southern slope and by the second year, grapes grew plump on the vines. Of bartering with other farms for the things they could not grow themselves, of their plans to breed horses and the trials of haggling with a horse trader in Sorviodunum.

He spoke of how they'd learned the hard way which of their neighbours would not treat with a ex-slave, be he freedman or citizen, and which of them would give a native Briton a better price than a Roman (Marcus smiled as he recalled the smug look on Esca's face when he'd come home with nearly twice what Marcus had received for the same amount of wool). It ought to have been obvious from dress and manner of speech alone, but it had slowly become clear that they were not necessarily the only ones in the province whose loyalties did not always lie closest to those of their own blood.

He spoke of how those months spent advertising his wares as an eye-doctor stood him in good stead for trading what their farm produced now, and how he still sometimes took on the persona of Demetrius of Alexandria, if not the name, when haggling for the best price. He told his uncle of the problems they'd had storing crops over the winter, and how that was improving since they'd managed to construct an oven for keeping the grain dry.

But there were things he held back, also. The things that made the experiment, as his uncle termed it, a sweeter life than most. He told his uncle of the first honey, but not the way Esca had dipped his fingers into the pot and licked them clean, until Marcus had felt his throat tighten with want. He spoke of their delight at plucking the first harvest of fruit, but not how they'd gorged themselves on it until their hands and mouths were stained berry-red, how they'd chased the taste of it on each other's tongues. He spoke of their wattle and daub house, and the cold bite of that first winter, but not how they'd lain by the flickering fire, wrapped in furs, Esca's fingers winding through Marcus's hair as they spoke to one another in low voices, Cub curled up by their feet.

When he told his uncle of the orchard and their hopes that they might have enough apples soon to be able to bring him cider on the next visit, Marcus made no mention of the time Esca had found him there one day at dusk, caught him about the waist and pulled him down to the ground with him, slowly peeling off his clothing there in the open, beneath the silvery shadow of the trees.

He spoke candidly of some of the difficulties they had faced, but did not say that if it had not been for Esca and his strong quiet confidence in Marcus and all that they planned to build together, he might have failed long before now, for all his determination. But perhaps that was not something that Uncle Aquila needed to be told; after all that had been the case since long before they had left to found their farm.

Although he did not speak of these things, the light of remembered happiness must have shown on his face, for Uncle Aquila gave a soft chuckle.

"You are content, then. It warms an old man's heart to see it so."

"Aye," Marcus said, not troubling to hide his smile. "I am well contented indeed."

And when he fell asleep that night in his uncle's house it was to dream of Esca and home.


End file.
